Volunteer Work

So last Monday I had a meeting with the volunteer agency, Ravelijn, that works with the inburgering agency, NVA. It went well and I was very impressed with how organized and focused they are. We talked about my future plans, as they put a lot of emphasis on finding volunteer work that will be useful for either experience useful for getting a real job, or networking for future jobs. But the primary objective is always to be getting practice speaking Dutch. They are very firm on that :-P

From what I could gather, Ravelijn deals largely or only with immigrant female volunteers. As a result, most of the non-profits they deal with regularly have positions for uneducated women, rather than over-educated Americans. But Ravelijn did an awesome job of finding a possible position for me with a organization that offers assistance to low-income renters in dealing with the organization that provides low-income housing in Amersfoort. I love rental law, so it would be great, even if I'm just stuffing envelopes and chatting with the other office workers. I had a meeting yesterday with that organization and Ravelijn, which seemed to go very well. The only concern is that my Dutch might not be good enough for me to be very useful. I'll hear back by Monday.

Over the weekend we did more gardening, clearing out the rest of the bricks and Stupid White Pebbles of Doom. We visited a large nursery in Leusden, which is really close enough to think of it as part of Amersfoort. It's still pretty early in the season, so we didn't find squash or brussel sprouts yet, and only one variety of blueberry bush, so we'll probably make another trip in week or two. Also to get non-edible plants :-) We gave the hibiscus tree a major pruning, which looked like it was about 5 years overdue. Hardy ones should get a hard pruning every year, apparently, to avoid becoming huge messy bushes and make nice big flowers. The top foot or two of the branches were completely entangled with a vine that had snuck in from the neighbor's yard. The plum tree out front also got a mild pruning.

We also finished up the downstairs bathroom this weekend. We painted it last weekend, though I think the color is too light. Jan fears paint any darker than the pastel shades, so we keep ending up with ... pastel shades :-P Anyhow, it looks a lot better with yellow/cream walls (depending on the light source), instead of a white wall over white wall tiles over white floor tiles. We also got up a small mirror, towel hook, and TP holder. The old TP holder was flimsy ugly yellow plastic, and the towel hook was a metal stick poking out of the wall.

Over the past few weeks I've been getting sick a lot, and I finally noticed a pattern. Exercise is making me sick! Basically any aerobic activity results in me getting intense chills and exhaustion 2 hours later, which lasts for about 2 days. I'd been having this problem every day lately after getting home from class, and I kept thinking I had the Neverending Dutch Flu For Immigrants or something. But over the weekends I usually feel better. After class I walk pretty fast for 10 minutes to catch a bus. I push myself hard enough that my breathing accelerates and my calf muscles start burning. Then I get sick. But if I walk slowly (like I did for the A level class, catching a bus that gets me to school 2 hours early), I'm usually fine. Gardening has also been fine, so long as I go slow and steady and don't carry around bags of bricks and such. Cycling to the volunteer work meeting yesterday made me sick again. Even riding slowly takes a lot more effort than a slow walk.

So I called the doctor today and made an appointment for this afternoon. Yeah, still no problems getting in to see a doc with socialized healthcare :-P I hope they can figure out what's going on ... there's quite a few things that can cause exercise intolerance, and some, like electrolyte imbalance and blood pressure problems, can be easily fixed. And if the cause is something not so easy to fix, hopefully I can get a better idea of how to deal with it. Hopefully I can go back to walking fast, because walking slow annoys me to no end.